Analysis of Calving Events in Antarctic Ice Shelves Using Configurational Forces

Division of Geosciences/Glaciology, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, GermanyPrevious studies on the sensitivity of cracks in ice shelves with different boundary conditions, stress states and density profilesrevealed the need for further analyses. As the transfer of boundary conditions from dynamic ice flow simulations to the linearelastic fracture analyses proved to be a critical point in previous studies, a new approach to relate viscous and elastic materialbehaviour is proposed. The numerical simulations are conducted using Finite Elements utilizing the concept of configurationalforces. To show the applicability of the approach, a 2-dimensional plane stress geometry with volume loads due to the iceshelf flow is analyzed. The resulting crack path is compared to available crack paths from satellite images.